Walter Pater (1839–1894)

Marius the Epicurean is a story about the intellectual and spiritual development of Marius, a young Italian acting as an amanuensis to the great emperor Marcus Aurelius, set in the second century A.D. against the backdrop of a Roman Empire on the edge of ruin. Marius travels through several philosophical systems in search of an illusive image of love, passing through Epicureanism, Cyrenaicism, and finally Stoicism until discovering what he was looking for in the dreadful beauty of Christian sacrifice. Marius the Epicurean is a rare novel in which the style is as important as the plot. Marius became a major impact on writers of the late Victorian era's Aesthetic and Decadent movements, because of Pater's elegant and poetic prose.… (more)

Pater's Renaissance is an important contribution to the history of art for several reasons, though it is perhaps not to be classified as art history itself. In ten essays, Pater takes us through the Renaissance from what he sees as its foreshadowings in France, to the characters of Florence and the Italian Renaissane including Botticelli, Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, and Giorgione, before he ends where he started in France.
So why is this not always seen as strictly being a work of art history? Firstly the style of Pater's prose is more that of an aesthete than of a scholar; indeed he arguably set off the Aesthetic movement in Oxford in the mid Victorian period to much consternation from his peers in college. This is not a criticism - it is what makes this book memorable, quotable, and very enjoyable to read. Secondly, and this acknowledged in the books subtitle "studies in art and poetry", this is a work more about poetry, and musing on art in a poetical frame of mind, than it is about historical facts.
So why is this work important? Firstly, if we are interested in its subject matter, the Renaissance, there is much we can learn about its spirit as a phenomenon, and what separates it in a serious sense from the Gothic and the Classical. Secondly, Pater's aesthetic attitude comes through in this work, which is helpful for those wanting to understand his influence on the generations of aesthetes that were inspired by this work, from Oscar Wilde through to the Bloomsbury group. This influence was perhaps in part responsible for a move away from dry Victorian sensibilities towards more readable, sensuous prose, while retaining many of the interests that were formerly the preserve of the scholar.
As an introduction to the Renaissance this might not be the best work due to its gaps and errors in attribution of paintings that have now long since been corrected. However as a thoroughly readable work with its own unique spirit of beauty this is unlike anything else, and worth reading for this reason alone.… (more)